Maine’s single largest state department has been without a top leader since last December and isn’t likely to get one until after the election this November.

If Gov. John Baldacci’s support were deeper, perhaps he could recruit someone to take over the troubled Department of Health and Human Services despite the risk that the job might last only until Christmas.

But with his disheartening polling numbers, the governor probably isn’t going to be able to attract the best person, who is likely already well employed and paid, with a mortgage or two, kids in college and a retirement to worry about.

That leaves Maine people, families and their health care system in the lurch for another year and that’s a shame.

Maine’s last DHHS commissioner, Jack Nicholas, left his job with little notice to “spend more time with his family.” It didn’t make sense then and makes less sense now – for two chief reasons.

First, Nicholas is the genuine article. Honest, smart, hard-working, dependable and mild-mannered. He helped former Gov. Angus King balance the budget as the state’s budget director during some awful economic times. In fact, he was so impressive in the role that Baldacci tapped him to run the gargantuan DHHS, which Baldacci created soon after being elected by merging the troubled Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services with the even more troubled Department of Human Services.

Which leads to the second reason: the DHHS employs 4,000 people and its budget approaches $3.2 billion a year in federal and state money. Its impact on Mainers’ lives is just as enormous. From mental health services to food inspections, from child protection to nursing home care, perhaps no other state department has greater influence on our lives and how we live them.

Nicholas quit at a bad time; the new “super agency” was still trying to fix a Medicaid computer meltdown when the federal Medicare prescription drug debacle struck in January. Yet, Nicholas left without offering much public analysis of the success or challenges of the merger. Not enough insight into whether we were taking care of the neediest people in Maine: the elderly, children, mentally ill, disabled. Little word on the general condition of our most important, costliest and controversial department.

The situation makes little sense because Nicholas did not seem the type to quit when the going got tough, and the department is so expensive and so far-reaching it seems odd that the governor – and Legislature – would leave it rudderless during such a stormy time.

The debate over Dirigo Health, the ongoing Medicaid and Medicare snafus, hospitals clamoring for $300 million in unpaid bills, terrorism, a possible bird flu outbreak in the next few years, a 40 percent increase in mental health diagnoses among Maine children, safe drinking water and lack of resources to take care of the sick and dying are just a sampling of the profound and timely problems facing DHHS today.

But nearly three years after consolidating the two goliath departments, the public has little information on whether the merger has been a success and, if so, how so. And it has no information on why the top boss at the department suddenly resigned, or how the governor plans to run the beleaguered department over the next critical months.

It seems reasonable now, during an election year, for an accounting of how we got where we are and whether there is a plan for where we’re going next.